Friday, March 28, 2014

Station Nine ~ Jesus Falls A Third Time

THE WORLD DOESN'T TOLERATE long explanations Even the products we buy are sold by a word or phrase: Just do it! And so, What is love? In a word? Generosity.

Jesus changed copious amounts of water into a fine wedding- wine. That's generous. Jesus fed five thousand people with a little bit of bread and a few fish. That's generous. When the men lowered their paralyzed friend down through the roof in front of Jesus who was teaching, Jesus responded to the intrusion with compassion and healing. That's generous.

Now Jesus is exhausted and down on the ground a third time but struggles back to his feet to finish the work he was given to do: to love us into something new. That's generous.

Jesus proposes only one question to the Christian wanna-be, and he proposes it by his own example: Am I generous? Truly.

It seems (at least through the eyes of this painter) that everyone got in on the act. We've all got a hand in it. I suppose too that in Jesus' patriarchal or male dominated society being degraded by a woman might add insult to injury. Ladies, take comfort in the women of Jerusalem who loved and mourned for Jesus.

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Father Stephen was ordained a priest in 1979 for the Diocese of Rockville Centre, Long Island, New York.
Before seminary he taught in New York City parochial schools. Following ordination he served as a parish priest and assumed chaplaincies to monastic sisters, a university hospital and a school-community for young people who had lost their life-direction. He currently resides at Christ of the Hills Retreat House in Pennsylvania. He has written and self-published "There is no problem..." a book of rosary meditations and The Way of the Cross, My Way of Life, a six week series of meditations on the traditional Stations of the Cross.